Welcome to the first Cooee Art MarketPlace Aboriginal Fine Art offering for 2019. Our June 4th multi-vendor auction features 105 lots including 36 works from the estate of collector and art enthusiast Mike Chandler. The estimated value is $750,000 - $1.4 million.

Mike Chandler was a close friend and client who patronised Cooee and other prominent galleries around Australia. For more than 2 decades Mike, and his delightful wife Barbie were welcome additions to any event or exhibition. Though Barbie’s death two years ago affected him deeply, he still made an effort to visit galleries, exhibitions and to champion Aboriginal art amongst his family and friends. We will miss him greatly. The paintings from his estate are offered as Lots 46 – 75 preceded by a short tribute. These artworks will be on display in our Bondi showroom with a special preview on Saturday 22nd May at 2pm.

Sale highlights include a highly significant early Papunya board by Johnny Scobie Tjapanangka (Lot No. 16) that has been returned to Australia from the US. Women’s Dreaming, 1972, 63 x 72.5 cm, estimated at $40,000 - 60,000, is believed to be the only painting that Scobie created during the Bardon years. An illustration of this work and accompanying notes including a copy of the original field note and drawing is reproduced in Geoffrey Bardon and James Bardon’s magnum opus on the origins of the Western Desert Painting Movement.* An even earlier Papunya board, Lot No.15, is a genuine sleeper. Created in 1971 it was just the fourth painting ever created by Johnny Warrangkula Tjupurrula and carries the very conservative estimate of $8,000 - 11,000.

Contemporary urban works by Lin Onus and Richard Bell stand out in this offering. Major works by Onus have been hotly contested in recent sales. Smaller works on illustration board are very tightly held by their owners as they are both beautiful and exceedingly rare. Gumurring Garkman, 1994 is a delightful image in Lin’s most successful style. Used as the template for one of Onus’s most enduringly popular fine art prints, this original work is estimated at $50,000 - 60,000 (Lot 21). A treasure awaiting any discriminating collector.

Richard Bell’s, A White Hero for Black Australia, presents one of the most iconic sporting images of all time in the artist’s signature graphic style. The subject is the medal ceremony for the 200-metres at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Peter Norman, Australia’s five-time national champion stands with African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos. More than just a compliant bystander, it was Norman who procured the Human Rights badges they wore, and Norman who suggested the black athletes share the same pair of gloves. The work measuring 100 x 150 cm is estimated $25,000 - 35,000 (Lot 20).

accompanied by a Boomerang Art certificate of authenticity and an image of Barbara Weir with the artwork

Minnie Pwerle began painting depictions of her country, Atnwengerrp, and its Dreamings when in her late 70s. There are many parallels in the careers of Minnie Pwerle and that of her countrywoman the great Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Both began painting late in life and both created work for a period of seven years. Both painted the majority of their works equally gesturally and produced a prodigious output. Both artists painted works that were immediately popular, most especially amongst women, and were able to support a number of close relatives with the income they generated.

Indeed the comparison between the two women, who were sisters-in-law, extended to their fundamental feelings of reverence, abandon and intuition. The manner in which they created their works appeared to be the result of an urgency to reconnect to the past and to keep the Dreaming a living reality. Just like Emily Kngwarreye before her, in painting after painting Minnie boldly and self-assuredly depicted the body designs painted onto women’s breasts and limbs for the regular ceremonial revivification of her country. While the rambling tuberous roots of the Yam or Bush Potato were Emily’s Dreamings and the subject of her art, Minnie’s primary focus was the Bush Melon and its seeds. Her Awelye-Antnwengerrp paintings drew directly from these ceremonial practices, depicting bush melon, seed, and breast designs in powerful multi-coloured brushstrokes that built into a structured patchwork of luminous colour most often emanating from within a darker under-layer. The energy of these vibrant colourful works seemed to capture the joy of coming across these sweet bush foods, now scarce and difficult to find.

Minnie passed away in 2006, her life an extraordinary journey mapping the transition from that of a nomad, through the early years of the pastoral industry, to a new era of Aboriginal control, and a flourishing art movement at Utopia. It has only been possibl

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